


Solstice

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, TSCC Conrit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 10:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21196046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Jim hates Christmas





	Solstice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the TSCC prompt 'holiday'

  
Solstice

  
by Bluewolf

  
Grace Ellison walked out just a few days before Christmas, the year Jim was eight and Steven six.

  
Jim (he thought of himself as 'Jim' even though his family called him 'Jimmy') knew that his parents had been arguing a lot for many months, though he hadn't entirely understood why they argued. His father seemed to think that his mother spent too much money on unimportant things; but at the same time Jim knew that his father was very wealthy. His mother seemed to think that there was no point at all in keeping more and more money in the bank, unused; and that there was more to life than spending at least ten hours a day, six days a week, earning more.

  
It was, he had supposed, part of his father's mania for success. Even at eight Jim had learned that his father gave no credit for effort, for doing one's best; members of his family had to _be_ the best. At their school's sports day (which William Ellison never attended, he was so busy in his office) he still expected Jim and Steven to enter every event for their age and win them all.

  
The house had been decorated for Christmas when Grace walked out; in the morning, the boys awoke to a house that was no longer decorated. Overnight, William had stripped away all the decorations and thrown out the tree - and Christmas Day, when it arrived, had been treated as an ordinary day. And it had been like that every year since.

  
So Jim had grown up to consider holidays - especially around Christmas - nothing but a disappointment. It was one of the reasons his marriage failed; Carolyn had expected a fancy meal at Christmas, at the very least; instead Jim had told her he wasn't spending money on a (basically) standard meal the restaurant had overpriced to make its customers think 'festive'. He told her he didn't expect - or want - a present; his present to her (he had realized that he had to give her something) had been a practical raincoat.

  
When he teamed up with Blair he had been surprised to discover that Blair, despite his Jewish name, celebrated Christmas. He called it a 'solstice celebration', but the date was so close that it could just as well have been called Christmas.

  
"Every culture that lived where there was a noticeable change in the length of day over the year celebrated the time when the days began to lengthen," Blair said. "Early Christian leaders realized that. Nobody really knows when Jesus was born - back then it's unlikely that any family bothered to keep track, there was so much infant mortality - but it made sense for the Christian Church to claim it was around the time of the solstice; a time of year when most of the people of the northern hemisphere celebrated the return of the sun. Pretty well every sun-oriented monument - even Stonehenge, that archaeologists thought for a long time was geared to midsummer - was more geared to midwinter and the important return of the sun."

  
"So Christmas is really... "

  
"Basically a pagan sun festival, though hardly anyone realizes that." Blair grinned and returned his attention to the meal he was making for solstice dinner.


End file.
